His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [158]
Much of Frank’s fathering fell to his valet, George Jacobs, and to his secretary, Gloria Lovell, who remembered all the children’s birthdays, shopped for all their presents, and called them on a regular basis.
“I feel like I raised those kids,” said George Jacobs. “For a while when Frank and Nancy weren’t speaking to each other I was the go-between. Young Frankie and I got to be real good pals. He’s a sad little guy, but sweet. A nice kid. I’d drive around with him, and when I’d bring him back home, Nancy, Sr., would be there, asking, ‘Well, what did Frankie say? What did he talk about? I don’t want you teaching my son no jive.’ I never did tell her what Frankie talked about, and I never told Frank either, because I didn’t want to break the kid’s confidence. With all those damn women around, he needed some man to talk to, and his dad just wasn’t around that much.”
“Poor Frankie. He’s had it tough being Frank’s son,” said Nelson Riddle, the father of six children, and someone Frank, Jr., had confided in over the years. “Frankie’s not an athlete like Dean Martin’s kid; he’s not a great student; he’s not a comedian or a back-slapper. He’s an introspective little guy. Broods a lot. Frank has never taken the time to know his son, and what he does know, he doesn’t like.
“[Frankie] never had a father who took responsibility for him. I don’t mean financial responsibility because Frank’s always been generous to his family with money, but a son needs more than that. He needs a man he can look up to. I’ve talked to Frankie a lot, and I know he doesn’t like his dad, but deep down he wants to be loved by him. He can’t get that love, though. He knows it. He doesn’t fawn like the girls do. He’s been left out ever since he was a little kid.”
Always self-conscious about his own lack of education, Frank wanted his children to finish high school and pleaded with them to go to college, hoping that at least one Sinatra might earn a degree. Trying to please him, Nancy, Jr., enrolled at the University of Southern California but lasted only a semester before dropping out; Frankie also attended USC, but after a year he, too, quit; and Tina never even applied. There was no motivation toward higher education at home and certainly no need to learn a profession. The children knew they would never have to rely on a job. Frank had established trust funds for all of them that would be worth millions.
Frank’s children were proud of him. They looked up to their father as the most important man in Hollywood. They saw movie stars approach him with reverence and fear, and even felt themselves treated with deference just because they were his children. To them, he seemed like the most influential man in the country. He knew important people all over the world—the Pope, the Queen of England, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Shah of Iran. He had recently become a close friend of John F. Kennedy, the most electrifying young politician in the United States, and he was close to the chieftains of the underworld—all of which convinced Little Nancy that her father possessed magic.
“Daddy is the most charismatic figure of the twentieth century,” she said.
20
Sam Giancana smoked Cuban cigars, drove a pink Cadillac, and talked out of the side of his mouth. He had fourteen aliases, but was known mostly as Sam Flood, Momo Salvatore Giancana, Moe or Mooney Giancana. He frequently introduced himself as Dr. Goldberg or Mr. Morris, but to Frank he was simply Sam.
A short, dour little man, he sat in the Armory Lounge in Forest Park, Illinois, and ordered killings as easily as he ordered his linguine. Some of the victims were simply shot, while others were hung on meat hooks and tortured with electric cattle prods, ice picks, baseball bats, and blowtorches. By 1960, Giancana had eliminated more than two hundred men.
This short, balding man with a sixth-grade education was known as Chicago’s Mafia